Physician Heal Thyself: Part 1 Opopanax Road
by Maria Patenaude
Summary: Nothing's okay in the Kingdom. When Paul Morlock's mysterious friend Mariella is assigned to recruit Mona Klingerman for her new role as a Breaker, the Living Dead Boy comes one step closer to pulling down the Tower... or does he? -Written August 2004
1. Chapter 1

**[Disclaimer: All Kingdom Hospital/Dark Tower Saga characters and elements are the intellectual property of Stephen King and/or Lars Von Trier.]**

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She felt something cold brush the back of her neck as she was writing at her desk. Thinking it was a simple draft, she ignored it. There had always been patches of cold in Kingdom Hospital and not all of them were supernatural. As she felt it again, a voice whispered in her ear. "Mariella." She dropped her pen and turned to face the tall, pale, dark-haired boy... the boy who was not quite dead.

"Paul, where have you been?" she inquired, a mixture of surprise, pleasure, and annoyance in her voice.

"Playing," he said in a low voice, then chuckled.

"They said you were gone," she told him, "that you were all gone."

"They say a lot of things," he reminded her coolly, "and They're usually wrong, aren't They."

"I missed you," she admitted softly.

"Did you?" he asked with dark pleasure. Mariella nodded. "Then why haven't you joined me?"

"I'm not ready—"

"You're afraid," he interjected.

"Yes," she admitted smilingly. He chuckled that low, malicious chuckle of his again. "Did you steal my computer?" she asked him suddenly and he laughed out loud. "I knew it! Paul Morlock, don't you ever _ask_?"

"Oh, but it's much more fun to _take_, Doctor Evans," he countered, still laughing.

"Are you planning on giving it back?"

His laughter stopped abruptly. "Um... Dr. Gottreich—"

"Oh, don't tell me he broke it!" she protested.

"No..." he told her. "He used it as a head."

"Did it work?" she asked, intrigued instead of annoyed.

He shook his head. "My mind was somewhere else," he said, his eyes trailing up slowly from her slender ankles to her shapely thighs.

She tugged her skirt down a little, but wasn't discomforted enough to blush. "You sure are hot-blooded for—"

"—someone who has no blood," he finished for her. "I'll bring you your computer back," he conceded.

"If?"

"If you help Dr. Stegman with something," Paul concluded.

"Steg? But you _detest_ Dr. Stegman," Mariella said, confused.

"Revenge makes for very strange bedfellows, Mariella," he reminded her. "Metaphorically speaking."

"Of course," she agreed.

"The Klingerman girl," he began.

"Mona."

"Yes. Mona," he echoed. "She's been moved to Derry Home Hospital."

"Derry... And you can't get to her," she concluded.

"Stegman can't get near her either, but that's not the point, Mariella. We don't want to _kill_ the girl."

"You don't?"

"No..." he said with a hint of impatience at her continuous interruptions. "We want you to heal her."

"It's Flagg, isn't it," she ventured.

"Shh!" he said harshly, laying a finger across her lips. "Of course it is. Now don't call him down on us," Paul whispered. "You're lucky you haven't been made a Breaker so far. If you stop being useful to him on this side, you will be, though. He favors me, but not _that_ much."

"Or else he would have let you kill me by now," she concluded, eyebrow raised.

"Smart girl. Will you do it?"

"Do you really have to ask?" she countered, smiling.

"Touché. Don't you want to know why we want you to heal her?" he asked, surprised by her lack of curiosity on that particular point.

"Well, I know why _you_ want me to heal her," Mariella said. "You want to take the guilt off of Stegman," she deduced, making the sign of the Keepers of the Kingdom with the tip of her thumb in her mouth and her pinkie upraised. "What I don't know is why _he_ wants me to heal her."

"Yes, you do," he said, tapping her gently on the temple with his cold, dead fingers.

"She's a Breaker," she said gravely.

"Very good," he complimented her. "She's not just a Breaker, though, she's _the_ Breaker. The one that can break that last Beam in a single millisecond."

"There are _two_ beams left, Paul," she corrected him.

"Yes, teacher," he said, rolling his eyes. "But only one has to break for the Tower to fall."

She clapped the heel of her hand to her forehead. "Of course."

"Of course," he echoed, looking almost sweet for a moment as he pulled her hand away from her head and kissed her palm, sending a pleasant shiver down her spine. "If you do this, we can be together," he said softly, that penetrating voice of his nearly hypnotizing her with each word. "If you do this, he'll set us free."

"What will happen when the Tower falls?" she asked him. Suddenly Paul Morlock didn't look so self-assured. His eyes widened like those of a lost little boy. "You don't know," Mariella stated. "How can you follow a course if you don't know the end?"

"Come on, Mariella," he countered. "Who ever knows the end of the path they choose?"

"You're right. Of course," she conceded.

"Come," he said, taking her by the hand. "Let's go give Steg a breath of fresh Morning Air."


	2. Chapter 2

As they came up to Nurse Von Trier in the hall, Mariella said, "Hi, Carrie," as pleasantly as always. Paul, ever playful, saluted her in Keeper fashion. Carrie, as was her habit, slumped down in a dead faint. "Welcome to the floor again, Carrie," she added, irritated, stepping over Nurse Von Trier's prostrate form.

"She seems to like it down there," Paul remarked idly as they continued down the hall toward Stegman's office. "Ooh," he said, hearing crashes from within. "The good doctor is displeased. Shall we give him aid and succor?"

"Watch your words," she warned him, knocking on Steg's door. "Doctor Stegman?" More resounding crashes ensued. "Doctor Stegman, it's Doctor Evans from Pediatrics. I need to speak with you. It's very important."

Paul rolled his eyes with impatience and pushed the door open. "I brought you a present, Steggie," he said over the din.

"Reprisals," Steg was muttering as he threw his belongings into a cardboard box. He paused long enough to give Mariella little more than a cursory glance. "That's not a present, that's a girl," he stated before resuming his so-called packing.

"She's much more than a girl, Steggie," Paul told him with an impish grin. "She's your ticket to freedom."

"The only ticket I'm buying," Steg countered, "is back to Boston. I've had enough of you lunatics."

"I can fix Mona Klingerman's nut," Mariella told him flat out.

"Idiocy," Steg contested. "That's absurd. Next you'll say that aliens landed in Roswell, New Mexico. Will you get this clinically insane candy striper out of here? I'm packing."

Dr. Evans grabbed Stegman's arm with surprising strength, drawing him against herself, her hand splayed upon his cheek, covering the wounds that Dr. Abelson, in her rage, had left there the night before. A white light emanated from the palm of her hand and an itchy, tingling feeling spread across his face, fading almost as soon as she released him from her grip. "Look in the mirror," she instructed.

Paul produced one from who-knew-where and handed it to him so he could look at himself. "Impossible," Stegman muttered.

"She's a Healer, Steggie. A natural one. She's Anubis's _real_ enemy... He just doesn't know it yet," Paul told him, chuckling.

Stegman eyed the slender red-haired girl suspiciously. She didn't look a day older than that Cammie or Candy or whatever her name was that was continually fainting underfoot. "So what are you doing in this hell hole?" he asked her, rubbing at his freshly healed skin distractedly.

"Biding my time until I was called to a higher purpose," she told him.

"Called by whom?"

"The Big One," Paul said jokingly, expecting him to argue that Steg was the big one. Instead, Steg cupped his hand to his forehead in the shape of an eye. The Eye of the Crimson King.

"Yes," Mariella agreed calmly. Paul, though, was unnerved. The meddling old woman hadn't closed the door after all. Instead it was standing wide open.


	3. Chapter 3

"Faith-healing, Paul?" Dr. Gottreich said as Paul retrieved Mariella's computer from the Old Kingdom. "Who is filling your head with such nonsense?"

"Nobody's filling my head with anything, and if you want to keep _yours_, you'll shut your trap," Paul warned him.

"She's _his_?" Gottreich inquired, giving pause to his annoyance. He thought of Paul as little more than a wild animal, but lately the boy had been surprising him. His connections, in particular, were mind-boggling.

"No, she's _mine_," Paul countered with the sarcastic half-smile that he reserved for the abysmally stupid. "Just as soon as she does this one little thing for him."

"What do you want of me then?"

"I want you to stay out of her way," Paul told him gravely. "If you meddle with her, you meddle with _him_, and losing your nut would be the least of your problems."

Gottreich, normally steadfast and self-assured, was surprised to look down at his own hands and find them trembling. Clasping them behind his back so the irksome devil-boy wouldn't see, he said, "Go then, Paul. I want no part in it."

"It was never about what _you_ wanted," the boy scoffed, taking his leave.

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"Once I heal her, then what do I do?" Mariella asked Paul as he was reconnecting her computer.

"There's a phone booth at the corner," he said idly. "You'll go there and wait for it to ring. They'll give you instructions on what to do next."

"What if he won't let me come back to you? What if he sends me somewhere else?" The boy looked up at her in surprise, not because he hadn't thought of all of this, but because she'd voiced a desire to come back to him. "Paul, how can you trust them?"

"I don't," he admitted, moving close to her. "I trust _you_." When he loomed over her like that, all the nerves in her body tingled with anticipation. No other man, no _living_ man, had ever made her feel quite that way. Paul didn't frighten her, but her feelings did, especially since he had barely touched her and already she felt like one of Dr. Schwarzton's tuning forks, all vibrations and nerve-endings. Paul was confused by her sudden trembling. He had never been quite this close to her before. She felt like a live wire, and still they weren't even touching. "Do I frighten you?" he asked her.

"No," she said with a nervous chuckle.

"Do you want me to?" he said, and she laughed. He was teasing her. The boy was fascinated by technology and was especially fond of movies. He was quoting one to her now, though she couldn't remember which. "Mmm, that's better," he murmured, finally putting his arms around her. "You looked like you were about to explode."

"Maybe I was," she admitted, touching his face gently. It was easy to forget that he wasn't really a boy when he smiled, and when her hands were colder than he was, she could almost pretend he was alive. "You wouldn't hurt me, Paul, would you?" she asked him, expecting him to refuse to answer or at the very least be vague.

"No," he said softly, his smile fading but still there. It was just one word; no fanfare, no fireworks; but in that moment Mariella believed he would die for her if he hadn't already been dead.

"I love you," she told him gravely.

"Do you?" he asked her. "You must be insane." He said this with a hint of disbelief, but no sarcasm.

"Maybe," she agreed, "but there's something about you, Paul."

"Something?" he echoed, teasing her. "What?"

"I don't know," she admitted, chuckling. "Can't you feel it?"

"It's not me, Ella," he whispered. "It's you. You only think I'm good, but I'm not. Except when you make me want to be." He drew her even closer to himself, kissing her gently but thoroughly, their mouths meeting and parting and meeting again until Mariella was dizzy and breathless. Paul held her close and said softly, "If you change your mind, I'll face him for you. I'll tell him I called it off."

"I won't change my mind," she assured him. She was doing it for him. Only for him. In her mind, there was no turning back.


	4. Chapter 4

"What's Mona's room number?" she asked as they made their way to the elevator that would carry them from the seventh floor to the lobby.

"Room 19," he replied with a smirk.

Mariella laughed. "Nineteen. Of course. Why did I even ask?" As the doors closed behind them and Paul pressed the button, she asked, "Will they hurt her?"

"Not if they value their hides," he replied grimly. As they exited the elevator moments later, they were suddenly confronted by Blondi, the security guard's dog, who was growling menacingly deep in his throat.

"Blondi?" Mariella said, surprised. "Hey, don't you remember me?" The dog responded with one sharp bark, teeth snapping mere inches from Mariella's hand.

"Get out of the way, fleabag," Paul growled back, throwing a short burst of energy at the floor near the animal's paws. Blondi ran away with a terrified yelp.

"I thought you couldn't do that outside of the Old Kingdom," Ella said, shaken, clinging to him.

"I couldn't," he agreed, more confused than ever. "Something's changed; I don't know what. I _should_ know, but I don't." He pulled away from her, crying out and slamming his fists against the wall in frustration.

"Paul," she said, laying a hand on his shoulder, relieved when he stilled. "Paul, maybe this is what we've been waiting for. Maybe you can go with me."

"No, Ella, that I _would_ know," he replied, his head against his forearm as he leaned against the wall. "But _this_... I didn't get the memo." He chuckled wryly.

She clasped his hand and he didn't stop her. "Come on," she said gently. "The sooner I do this, the sooner you'll be free."

He straightened up and said, "Well, let's get on with it, then," feigning that he was in a hurry when the truth was he was rue to let her go.

As they moved toward the exit, they suddenly heard a clamor of laughing voices, finding themselves face to face with the same people that had been fighting against them as they returned from their pre-dawn celebration. Upon seeing Paul, the merry crew was shocked into silence.

"The Boy," Abel said.

"The Bad Boy," Christa agreed.

"And the Lost Girl," Abel added, looking directly at Mariella.

"I thought you said he'd been cancelled," Dr. Draper said reproachfully to Mrs. Druse.

"I thought _you_ said he was hideous," Nat Rickman remarked to Draper, eyeing Paul with a small but appreciative smile. Her husband, Peter, shot her a half-jealous half-horrified glance, but said nothing. Mrs. Druse, meanwhile, kept opening and closing her mouth in disbelief.

"Get out of our way, short-timers," Paul said menacingly. "This doesn't concern you."

"The hell it doesn't," Dr. Hook protested, making his way forward from the back of the group with a suffocating sense of déjà vu.

"You had your chance," Paul shot back, sounding pleased with the chance to wreak some havoc on the meddlesome do-gooders that had caused him so much trouble of late. He started to laugh, having decided that the best place to start was with the feebs. He lifted his arm, fully intending to blast them into oblivion.

"No!" Mariella cried out, seeing whom he meant to harm. Abel and Christa were the two beings most similar to herself that she had ever known, not feeble-minded in any real sense, and she could not stand by and let Paul hurt them. She threw herself between him and them without a second thought, taking the full brunt of the blast that Paul released before he could stop himself.

"No!" Paul shouted in anguish. "No, no, no! Ella!" He dropped to his knees beside her, appalled by what he'd done, but even more shocked that she was still alive. "Ella, come on. Stay with me," he ordered her, as if making it an order would force her to obey. His nose was filled with the scent of charred clothing and charred flesh. His hands were drenched with her blood as he held her. "Don't go," he said, nearly begging.

"Paul. Someone's there. Do you see them?" she said softly, wide-eyed. "No!" she protested, obviously talking to someone that only she could see. "Let go of me. I want to stay with Paul. Paul!" Her tone changed again as she called to him. "Paul, help me! Paul!" One moment she was calling his name, and the next... she was gone.

Paul screamed, his anguished cry reverberating through the building and sounding more like the howl of a savage beast than anything else. He picked up Mariella's limp body and slung her over his shoulder, oblivious to both the blood and the weight.

"You'll pay for this, short-timers!" he shouted, then disappeared, whether to the Old Kingdom or some other Where, they did not know. They did know one thing, though. What they'd done had backfired. Paul still existed. Their next encounter would surely be worse because Paul himself was worse.

Much. Much. Worse.

Welcome to Number Nineteen Opopanax Road, where _nothing_'s okay in the Kingdom... and the Dead will never be at rest.

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**[Original****ly written for KettTurtonFan. First published online August 14, 2004.**

**To be Continued in Part 2: The Path's End. All Kingdom Hospital/Dark Tower Saga characters and elements are the intellectual property of Stephen King and/or Lars Von Trier.]**


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